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Tesla as an opportunity of investment

Tesla as an opportunity of investment

Submitted by Tesla Lover on February 2, 2013

I belive that all people that are reading this post think that Tesla is a great Car Company, the most advanced, the most innoative and the most oriented at the future.
This is the reason for which I'm evaluating tesla as an opportunity of investment and i would like to discuss with you about this.

Curt Renz |
March 2, 2013

On February 28 analysts at Northland Securities initiated coverage on shares of Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) with an “outperform” rating. The target price for Tesla is set to $42. Tesla's shares closed at $34.83 yesterday.

Curt Renz |
March 2, 2013

Update on previous post:

I was quoting from Bezinga's Friday comments. They were referring to Thursday's price. TSLA closed at $34.65 on Friday.

Curt Renz |
March 2, 2013

After the close on Friday, Market Edge downgraded TSLA to Neutral from Long.

Brian H |
March 2, 2013

Curt;
The quality of his information: the "various studies" that show 97-98%" of "scientists" support the conventional "consensus" comes from various repackages and requotes of a putrid grad student study. They sent out about 5,000 very slanted questionaires, got about 1,300 back (and some refusals indicating the questionaire was too flawed to respond to), hand-picked 79 of those as "qualified" (had had papers approved and published, meaning members of the "Circle"), and of those deemed 77 to be "supportive" of the consensus. Basically, agreed that mankind's contribution to warming was "significant" -- which in scientific terminology means only "statistically greater than zero". 77/79 = 97.5%.

In reality, public statements by thousands of scientists, in and out of the field, dispute the consensus, many multiples of the numbers supporters can raise. The late Hal Lewis, a Founding Member of the American Physical Society, resigned because its admininstrators issued a statement calling the science "incontrovertable", one of the most anti-science positions one could take, and refused to allow him to open discussions amongst the membership on the topic. Part of his resignation letter:
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

Curt Renz |
March 2, 2013

Brian H, it’s unfortunate that the petroleum and automotive industries have influenced some of their close media friends, like “Faux News”, to confuse people into believing anthropogenic climate change is not really happening. Unfortunately they present a few “scientists” supportive of their political agenda. Long time Chicago based WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling is a friend of mine. He was a global warming denier in the past and said so during his broadcasts and to me. Then his Nobel Prize winning friend Don Wuebbles straightened him out. It was Tom who gave me the link to Don’s lecture.

The ice age cycle based on the Earth’s orbital and axial cycles should have produced a peak in warmth about a millennium ago. Indeed, that’s when the Vikings colonized Greenland. After that the decline into the next ice age should have begun. As the model would have predicted, temperatures kept falling into what is known as the “Little Ice Age” of the 17th and 18th century. Then with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, the decline began reversing. As the automobile and industrialization spread to the rest of the world during the late 20th century, especially in China and India, the pumping of CO2 into our air has grown exponentially.

Serious scientists have long debated the issue and have now reached a consensus. Climate change is real and human activity is the primary cause. The debate now should be about the degree to which it is harmful, and what if anything we should do about it.

Brian H |
March 2, 2013

Curt;
Fox News has nothing to do with the issue, just a talking point, whipping boy for those pushing the scam.

Dr. Hal Lewis was a prominent physicist, uninfluenced by media. Which, btw, has suppressed all sorts of information, such as the near 100% failure of the computer models, on which the entire edifice rests, to make a single successful prediction. That is supposed to be fatal, in science. In Scam-Land, it's just ignored. Actually read Lewis' letter. And his bio. There are many like him.

The disconnect you don't seem to comprehend is between the growth of CO2 (almost entirely since 1940) and the temperature. Not only has it plateaued this century, in stark contradiction to ALL models and "theories" of anthropogenic change, the previous "anonomalous" warming occurred almost entirely in 2 years, 1997-8 ('Super El Nino' years). Also directly falsifying the theory and models, which predict smooth accelerating growth. But there are too many careers hanging on keeping the gravy train rolling to acknowledge that.

The markets know better. Whenever a Carbon Exchange is set up, the price heads for the basement, despite desperate government scrambling to float it. The Chicago Carbon Exchange, CCX, (Gore's personal baby, which he bailed out of in time, with a few hundred million) failed when the price per ton fell to 5¢. The EU exchange is sinking despite all efforts to push it, including withdrawal of "excess credits". Etc. There's just no "there", there.

There is one solid, proven link. Recession reduces emissions, and reducing emissions produces recession. Be VERY careful what you ask for.

Curt Renz |
March 2, 2013

Brian H, apparently you did not listen to Nobel Prize winning Don Wuebbles' entire lecture, particularly the matter of temperature trends relative to models and occasional natural anomalies. Yet you’re taking seriously Hal Lewis who in his declining years claimed trillions of dollars have been used to force scientists to endanger their careers by joining a conspiracy to present falsehoods? Who provided the trillions? Surely not the scientists themselves or their academic institutions. Elon Musk is not worth trillions. The government doesn’t have that much to spread around secretly, and has no reason to collectively choose falsity over truth in this matter. All of those clashing politicians surely could not create and maintain a leak-proof conspiracy that continues through several changes in administrations and Congresses. It’s the latter that initiates funding, and they agree on hardly anything.

On the other hand the petroleum, automotive and other polluting industries are worth quite a bit and have interests in common. They don’t have to directly bribe the media, but they can buy advertising time or refuse to do so. Advertising is the lifeblood of the media. I spent an entire career in TV news, most of it in financial news. I understand how it operates. Although in broadcast news we had to adhere to federal guidelines or have our licenses taken away. Cable news has no such restrictions. There they can tie together their audience’s social concerns (about which corporate boardrooms couldn’t care less) with economic concerns (about which corporate boardrooms care a great deal). They regularly get people to believe that black is white and thinking it’s for their own good. Watch out, or one day we’ll be saluting the flag of the United Corporation of America.

kkiri7 |
March 2, 2013

What we do know is that many reputable international scientific organizations recognize that most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. Some of them are:

• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Astronomical Society
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Physics
• American Meteorological Society
• American Physical Society
• Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO
• British Antarctic Survey
• Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Environmental Protection Agency
• European Federation of Geologists
• European Geosciences Union
• European Physical Society
• Federation of American Scientists
• Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
• Geological Society of America
• Geological Society of Australia
• Geological Society of London
• International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
• International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Royal Meteorological Society
• Royal Society of the UK

TeslaRocks |
March 3, 2013

Brian, if global warming is a "scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it", where does the money come from? Those who have the money, lately, are oil companies, and they have spent the last few decades trying to confuse the public about whether or not global warming is real, yet even Exxon Mobil is now supporting a carbon tax as an alternative to costly regulation. If they believed that global was a scam, they would keep saying so and preventing anything to be done about it, which they can since they have more money than anyone and a huge influence in government. So why do they seem to be changing their minds, other than the fact that their position is impossible to defend in the face of mounting evidence that climate change is real?http://business.financialpost.com/2012/11/16/exxon-warming-up-to-secret-...

The price on a carbon exchange directly depends on the likelihood and the severity of government regulation, so a falling carbon credit price only means that government is not seen to be enforcing any laws to limit CO2 emissions any time soon. The fact that there is even an exchange at all and contracts with greater than 0 value speaks more to the truth of the matter than does the price trend.

I'll agree with you if you tell me that Big Bang theory is false and its popularity is a function of the herd mentality of our species, but I think it's pretty hard to deny climate change when you take the time to look at the facts.
-It's a fact that humans have been emitting a lot of greenhouse gas, and that amount is increasing pretty much exponentially.
-It's a fact that greenhouse gases cause a greenhouse effect, as demonstrated many times in the lab. Whether a warming atmosphere releases extra methane from melting permafrost or extra CO2 from the warming surface layer of oceans is cause for concern but beside the point.

There are other factors at play such as El Nino, but it doesn't void the fact that GHG causes GH effect and that humans have been emitting a growing amount. The only unknown is what exactly the effect will be, but we can fear for the worse after seeing the preview of the last decade or so. And the reason why we've seen such radical changes in the whether in the last little while is because of the way the emissions have increased now that China opened up its economy just before the new millennium and started burning a growing amount of coal and oil compared to before. The bicycle use to be the way to get around in China, but the automobile has been gaining ground. True to the nature of exponential growth, for the first majority of the history of human CO2 emission, up to the last few years or decades, the rate of emission has been relatively small enough to allow CO2 levels to remain within a natural or historical range, partly due to the ability of plants to absorb the extra CO2. Now that the rate is much higher, we see the level rising rapidly and the effects on the weather (faster melting of glaciers, stronger and more frequent hurricanes like Katrina, Rita, and Sandy, rising temperatures especially at the poles, acidification of oceans, et cetera...). Keep in mind that oceans absorb about half of what we emit each year, but they can't process that much CO2, so it builds up in oceans, where many of the effects will be felt, which is mostly invisible to us.

Beyond these few pointers, Brian, I must respectfully suggest that you go do some proper research on your own if you still don't believe me because this is starting to feel like that other thread with these fellows who were arguing that perpetual motion can exist and that the model S should have wind turbines to recharge the battery.

I agree that cutting down on CO2 emissions could be costly in terms of jobs and economic growth, at least in the short term, but the net effect will mostly be, at least in the medium long term, that new companies that are in tune with the future, such as TM and Solarcity, end up replacing old companies that have been refusing to evolve, such as GM and Exxon Mobil. That is the beautiful thing about free market and disruptive innovation, when it can be allowed to exist (which is too seldom lately, unfortunately). The speech that the economy will be doomed probably comes from those companies with large legacy investments and positive cash flows and who prefer to postpone the reality check the best they can than to face it. Managers get rewarded for short term performance and the long term is mostly irrelevant to them or so they feel. Once the transformation to a greener and smarter economy takes hold, I believe the future will be much better than what we are offered now, as Tesla cars might suggest.

Brian H |
March 3, 2013

The list of "societies" is a list of compromised admistrators, essentially bureaucratic types who did NOT consult the membership. There are many, many members who resigned in outrage or disgust.

The trillions are the sum of all the government money, directed exclusively at bolstering the infrastructure of the power grab (which UN bodies, numerous and highly ambitious, explicitly admit are using the Climate Scare to stampede legislatures and populations into consenting to power transfer to global financial bodies.

As for the 'Big Oil' boogy-men, they are pretty much on board. Virtually all their research contributions go to 'consensus' institutions and research. It gets them both influence and tax breaks, etc. -- pretty much a "go with the flow" game. From BP to Exxon to Shell, etc., the picture is the same. Those contributions are easy to document. I defy you to find money going in the opposite direction. It's just not there, and such instances as are quoted are minute and trivial, fractions of a percent of the pro-consensus funding. Suggestions that their or government money be matched 10% going to "Red Team" challenges are simply ignored, though it's widely accepted as best practice in industry (to avoid the cost of horrific mistakes).

Your stereotyping of my presumed other attitudes and approaches is beneath contempt, and I will not respond.

Here's a basic of science to comprehend: The "Null Hypothesis" is always that the phenomena addressed are the result of (unspecified and unknown, or previously accepted) natural variances. It is necessary to disprove the Null (H0) before even considering any alternative (H1). The only response of the "(Catastrophic) Anthropogenic Global Warming" crowd is to say they can't think of anything but CO2 that could cause such-and-such, so it must be taken as the Null. This is arrant nonsense, of course.

And it turns out that all the "variability" claimed and pointed to is well within historical bounds. The Null remains solid, robust, and requires no flimsy CO2 substitutes. They are junk, and their predictions, I repeat, fail spectacularly at every turn. But very useful; control energy generation and use and you control virtually the entire world economy.

danielccc |
March 3, 2013

Brian, what are you actually saying? Yeah, I get the part about the models not having predicted anything and about climate change induced by CO2 being a scam run by Al Gore to achieve world domination.

But those are just so many words. Can you be a bit more precise? To wit, according to you:

Is CO2 a heat-trapping (greenhouse) gas, yes or no?

Will reaching 400 ppm of CO2 (we will get there by 2015) have an effect on global temperature, yes or no? If yes, how much?

Will reaching 500 ppm of CO2 (we will get there by 2050 with current policy) have an effect on global temperature, yes or no? If yes, how much?

Will there be any effect on sea levels, in your estimation, due to CO2 induced warming? By 2050? By 2100?

If you find no problem with 400 and 500 ppm, is there any level of CO2 in the atmosphere that you would be concerned about? If so, what is this level?

And you just can't hand-wave "failed predictions" away. They constitute "Falsification trials". And the theory is falsified. Repeatedly, when even once would be too often.

danielccc |
March 3, 2013

Enough chit chat. Let's see your numbers. So far I hear crickets.

Brian H |
March 4, 2013

All the predictions are dependent on the fundamental, disproven assumption that CO2 affects temperature in the atmosphere or surface. Any increase in temperature will follow the same track it has since the end of the Little Ice Age, about 1°F per century -- if we're fortunate enough not to enter the next ice sheet era. Sea levels are rising at a couple of inches a century, and will likely not change that pattern. There are NO imminent or prospective threats from warming, only benefits. Cooling is the opposite, and far more likely. The dangers touted (storms, droughts, etc.) are actually consequences of COOLING, which steepens the topics-polar gradients. (The storms and droughts of 2-3 centuries ago beggar anything more recent.)

Doncha get it? Anthropogenic Global Warming (with all the other weasel-worded circumlocutions like "distortion", "weirding" etc.) is a failed and disproven speculation (it really never even properly qualified as a hypothesis, much less a theory). The leading developers and promoters of it are Jackasses of All Sciences, Masters of None (true experts in each of its scores of specialties and component areas are contemptuous of their misapplication of fields they don't grasp, from mathematics to plant and ocean biology to atmospheric physics, and most especially computer modelling and general forecasting.)

danielccc |
March 4, 2013

I asked very simple, straight questions. You have not even answered one of them. I see little point in this discussion till you do.

Brian H |
March 4, 2013

All the questions are answered by noting that CO2 has no detected or measured real world impact (= NONE) on any of those measures. So the changes you ask about are unrelated (have a random relationship) to CO2. Since the answers would be irrelevant, there are no meaningful numbers to give you.

Brian H |
March 4, 2013

Your questions are just another form of the famous ones along the lines of, "Have you cut down the times you beat your wife these days?"

Bogus and presumptive.

Brian H |
March 4, 2013

And you have not responded to the implicit questions: "Of what relevance are the video game projections of a falsified computerized speculation? Why should we care about them? Or pay for them?"

danielccc |
March 4, 2013

So you are saying then that atmospheric CO2 has no temperature impact on the atmosphere at all?

I'll respond in due course but I need to understand what your assumptions are in order to be able to respond constructively.

Brian H |
March 4, 2013

Yes, none detectable. It is embedded in such a powerful water feedback system that any influence it has is swamped, below noticeable levels. The theoretical calculations make assumptions that do not hold up.

TeslaRocks |
March 5, 2013

So there is a big conspiracy, the environmentalists are aiming for world domination and will stop at nothing, not even at funding junk science to the tune of trillions of dollars and at secretly coercing Nobel winners and the scientific community at large, now even oil giants, into promoting this lie?

Brian H |
March 5, 2013

The funding is self-sustaining; the politicians gain a terrific lever for both imposing taxes and enhancing their reach, and, as Hal Lewis says, the scientists are corrupted by a marvelous and very rich source of funding. You should see some of the ludricrous stuff that gets through by being linked to "climate change"! And studies that come out actually contradicting the hypothesis, but with a patched-in CYA assurance in the summary that the authors really support the consensus, and with "further research" (read: more grants and funding) they will surely be able to resolve the contradictions. It's quite a joke how stereotyped those little but necessary statements of orthodoxy are!

Anyhow, I repeat: the failed projections/predictions invalidate the whole enterprise. Time to reset and start over. At least, that's what science used to be like, before the money taps opened for junk imitations.

TeslaRocks |
March 5, 2013

By the same logic, if it is suspected that smoking is bad for your health and some research was done, which gathered some evidence pointing in that direction, except that the models that were put together cannot quite predict what exactly will happen to you specifically or precisely when it will happen, then the whole theory is flawed, a failure, and this result proves that smoking is in fact good for your health. Most of your posts suggest that you are quite intelligent, but you are not making much sense here Brian.

I can relate if you say you don't like how scientists, maybe because they are people, can behave like sheep and have this annoying herd mentality, which is actually bad for science. I feel this way about the nonsense Big Bang theory, which almost every single scientist seems to automatically subscribe to because that is what they heard and what the textbooks said. That theory seems based pretty much exclusively on the observed red-shift effect, from which it is assumed to be an inevitable consequence, as if light that's been traveling for billions of years couldn't lose energy as a result of some other, unknown phenomenon, and has to be a perpetual motion machine, unlike everything else in the universe.

That being said, whether or not you like the consensus that has been forming about a given topic or question, I would suggest looking at the actual facts, the objective data, to derive your own conclusion. It's fine to have doubts about the validity of climate change models and predictions, but this should be based on more than just conspiracy theories and the notion that if it can't predict something perfectly, then it must prove the opposite. I haven't heard a single convincing argument from you against climate change. I'm not even sure I've heard you say a single philosophically valid argument about this topic. I realize that saying that climate change is real, but without explaining why, can be an appeal to authority fallacy. However, my personal experiences perfectly agree with climate change theory, which is a probabilistic model remember, so I have no reason to doubt its validity.

Bubba2000 |
March 5, 2013

We do not need all the scientific studies about climate change and the environment as related to burning of fossil fuels. Take a trip to Southern China and try to breath the smog. Or go to New Delhi, Mumbai, etc. At this rate, the environmental situation will only get worse at 5+ billion people in the world industrialize using fossil fuels rapidly.a Trip to Alaska and melting glaciers are an eyeopener.

I just do not know how they can cut consumption of fossil fuels. Even countries like Germany have a hard time doing this using solar energy, wind, hydro, etc. Even German houses have stringent insulation requirements. Yet, the costs are hurting their economy.

danielccc |
March 5, 2013

Brian, please do yourself a favor and read this history of resarch into the role of CO2 in the greenhouse effect.

As you read, the first paragraph where you see a problem, tell me what it is, and I will be happy to reply in detail, with math, pictures, and everything.

I'll take this opportunity to note that it is fair to say Elon Musk's entire carreer since he has sold PayPal, that is SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City, is predicated on CO2 being a greenhouse gas. (The SpaceX part is because the viability of terraforming Mars depends on warming the atmosphere by triggering the release millions of tonnes of now frozen CO2 from the poles and permafrost.)

If you are right, Musk has been wasting a fantastic amount of time and effort by both himself and his employees for a decade, not to mention investor capital.

Let's see... Brian H or Elon Musk. Who could possibly be right?

Tough one.

Brian H |
March 5, 2013

Assigning homework is not on, sorry. Skimming, not that Arrhenius' subsequent slashing of his initial predictions is not mentioned.

It matters not. The whole of the package is bundled into about 20 General Circulation Models, no two of which can come up with the same projections. They're then lumped, and still get it wrong. But are excused because they issue "projections", not predictions. Swiss cheese is as solid as a brick wall, by comparison.

No matter what the excuse, failed prediction means dead hypothesis.

'Bye.

Brian H |
March 5, 2013

typo: "I note that Arrhenius'..."

danielccc |
March 5, 2013

To begin with, the predictions have not failed. Just because you keep repeating it doesn't make it so. Global temperatures are consistent with a warming trend in line with prediction. There is plenty of noise in the climate, so you can arrive to any conclusion you like by using a 10 year window.

Not only that. Average temperature is not the only important number. Sea level is rising at a rate of around 3 mm per year. 2012 saw the greatest ice surface loss from the Arctic ever recorded, as well as a record warm year in the continental US by a full degree F over the previous record.

Also, record high temperatures are being set at over twice the rate of record low temperatures over very long periods, something not possible in a steady climate (there would be a 50-50 split).

Arrhenius did cut his predictions, but you omit that his original figure was very high (6 degrees C with a doubling of CO2). You also omit that Arrhenius and other scientists at the time thought warming would be a good thing, as they were concerned about ice ages.

I gave you that link because it gives historical context and addresses common issues raised. A key point here are that all the early researchers were quite fine with global warming, and in any case saw it as happening many centuries out (since CO2 output at the time was far lower than today). So your accusation that this is a fraud perpetrated by alarmists is plainly false.

Then there is the water vapor issue. The spectral absorption lines for water vapor and CO2 are close, but do not match. It appeared they matched with 19th century instruments, but with resolution achieved by the 1940's it was clear that this was not the case. Further, CO2 accumulation is significant in the upper atmosphere, where there is little water vapor. Adding CO2 makes the atmosphere infrared opaque at higher altitudes than previously, so a smaller percentage of the mass of the atmosphere is able to radiate heat into space. Callendar's papers from the late 1930's explain this. Note that Callendar thought this was a good thing, "likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power", and "very important at the northern boundary of cultivation", while "the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely". Hardly sounds like a guy trying to get money from changing the energy mix, does it?

TeslaRocks |
March 5, 2013

Not sure CO2 would help warm Mars significantly, considering it is already 95% of the atmosphere, so pretty saturated, and there are much more powerful greenhouse gases. Also, I strongly doubt that greenhouse effect will be enough to warm up Mars, as part of the problem is a rather thin atmosphere and relatively low levels of sunlight (lower solar constant) due to distance (because proportional to 1/r^2). People don't realize how impossibly cold Mars currently is (the south pole of Earth in the death of winter is almost warm in comparison), and I don't know what technology will achieve that beyond borrows to begin. (See my other post about why a Mars colony should be deep underground http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/falcon-heavy-loop-mars-empty-nes... )

But other than this nuance I agree that Elon's recent career, even his life purpose, rests on the premise that CO2 and climate change are serious stuff. Extreme climate change might even be one possible threat he implies when he says he wants to make life multi-planetary as an insurance policy against disasters. I like how he is active on both fronts, sort of saying we should start colonies as insurance but we should also address climate change because our planet is incredibly precious to us (as colonizing Mars will help us realize, if it wasn't already clear).

Regarding cutting consumption of fossil fuels, I agree it is challenging because we are so used to the convenience of just burning something when we need heat or power. Renewables require far better planning than do fossil fuels. I think that wind power will account for maybe 25 to 50% of the electricity supply in the medium-far future when a new steady state will be reached, solar will be maybe 40 to 60% (including PV and solar-thermal-OTEC hybrid), and I suspect fusion power with helium-3 from the lunar surface will account for most of the rest, the reliable back-up. Energy storage in batteries and/or flywheels will be somewhat more common, but mostly in places where it will primarily be a back-up to the grid at critical locations like hospitals and office buildings where power interruptions are costly or dangerous. Regulating intermittent energy sources (wind and solar) with peak and off-peak demand will be done by these storage devices as it will be a source of income that will help them pay for themselves, but these devices will only be viable where also on standby to serve as back-up instead of diesel generators. Wind power will also become significantly more consistent than it is now, which will also be key to making it cheaper (I'm working on that). Transportation will mostly be electric and ocean liners will also use large kites to save fuel, as is currently beginning.

Brian H |
March 5, 2013

Honesty about what the predictions were, and what would constitute a falsification is the first requirement. Obviously lacking. Second requirement is a strenuous effort to falsify one's own hypothesis. Not even a wisp.

It's a pure promo and "defend at all costs" approach, nothing (except effort to exploit the label) to do with science.

danielccc |
March 6, 2013

What about the predictions is wrong? Average global temperature is up between 0.6 and 0.8 C, depending on the calculation, over the twentieth century average. This is perfectly in line with prediction.

Also in line with prediction is that the upper stratosphere is cooling, exactly as expected, since less IR radiation is able to leave the lower atmospheric levels. This is a bit like the fact that the outside surface of a house will be cooler, but the interior warmer, if you add insulation.

Take a look at the fossil fuel pollution in China or India. They have just began industrializing. 10x US population in that part of Asia.

Brian H |
March 6, 2013

True. But the solution is not to avoid industrializing. Wealth permits cleanup, and efficiency permits and demands it.

TeslaRocks |
March 6, 2013

The commonly implied idea that there MUST be this equation:
wealth = industrialization = pollution
is rubbish. It is often correlated but really doesn't have to be, all depends on choices that are made and policies that are put in place... or not. A carbon tax is a good example of something that is lacking.

Another bunch of nonsense is the notion of overpopulation. People are or at least can be the solution because they can care and innovate, solve problems and clean up after themselves.

Brian H |
March 6, 2013

If you want to see a ravaged environment, make the populace poor and desperate.

Tesla Lover |
March 7, 2013

tesla rally continue, +8 % from monday

wonder |
March 7, 2013

Funny Thread "heading" to find an indepth "at least on one side" discussion on "Climate Change"!

ian t.wa.us |
March 7, 2013

No moderators here so sometimes we can get distracted by shiny objects or fuzzy creatures...

Squirrel!!

ian t.wa.us |
March 7, 2013

Oh yeah, wish I could have bought more on Monday! Oh well, in for the long haul.

Brian H |
March 7, 2013

Some financier whose name I keep forgetting once said, "I have become wealthy buying too late and selling too soon." Don't sweat it and try to time the market very closely.

oildeathspiral |
March 7, 2013

I enjoyed the back and forth on climate change since it involved smart people having a discussion that mostly avoids the typical deterioration on some other forums, not to mention the Yahoo message boards.

Another perspective regarding c02 emissions: it doesn't matter, at least in the U.S. The plunge in nat gas prices due to fracking is causing it to displace coal in electricity generation (50% less co2), diesel in trucks (see WPRT and CLNE) and a little further out trains and ships, all of which will dramatically reduce c02 emissions. More pertinent to those of us who are fans of Tesla, the beginning of the growth of the electric car market, led by Tesla, has started and this will also lower co2 emissions. I believe Tesla's success and the inherent cost advantages of a pure electric over an ice will force other car makers into the game, further accelerating this adoption not just in the U.S. but worldwide too.

Final point: for some of us, enthusiasm about ev's to enable our country to get off oil because it's good for the U.S. and bad for Iran, Russia et al was reason enough. The fact that the MS is truly a great car along with the many other benefits of ev's show that they are the proverbial win-win for all sides of the political aisle.

ian t.wa.us |
March 7, 2013

Don't get me wrong I have enjoyed the discussion too. Still need to do some of the reading and research though. It's been a great reminder to maintain skepticism, read and come to my own conclusions.

Don't worry, no market timing going on here. Couldn't if I wanted to.

TeslaRocks |
March 8, 2013

Well said, oildeathspiral.

Bubba2000 |
March 8, 2013

What is the availability of Lithium metal? I understand that SQM (Sociedad Quimica de Chile) is one of the largest producer of Li in the world. Probably there are others. What will be the increase of price of Li if demand takes off? Other alternatives? Zinc Air batteries?

Timo |
March 8, 2013

Lithium is quite abundant metal. Here in Finland we have quite large deposit found just (relatively) recently and you can even extract it from seawater if you want. It just is one resource not yet fully exploited yet, so I would believe price is not going anywhere soon. Also it is not gone when used in batteries like gas, you can recycle all of it to new batteries when it is time to let go of the old one. Once everybody have their BEV:s demand for new lithium sources pretty much stops.

jk2014 |
March 8, 2013

Interesting to see if Tesla will institute a recyclying program for depleted battery packs. Maybe do a refurbishment program, sell refurbished kWh battery in new MS at a discount. Also, refurbish current owner battery at a discount compared with a new replacement battery pack. This could affect resale values in a positive way. Another advantage over ICE.

danielccc |
March 8, 2013

Lithium is not the problem. Cobalt is. There are lithium chemistries that do not use cobalt, but with lower capacity. Lithium Iron Phosphate, for example. If one of those could be improved, no cobalt would be required.

ian t.wa.us |
March 8, 2013

Battery packs will get repurposed before they get recycled. Even when an 85kWh pack loses 20% - 30% of it's capacity it could be used as a back up for a home or Super Charger PV setup. I bet this is where those packs go first...

Looks like they are going to hit the 4500 MSs sold in Q1. ASP around 82k, revenues around 369m, more car sales in a quarter than all Fy2012... take this as the average revenue per quarter, Tesla's looking at 1.47b in revenues for fy2013. Eps of 13.2. P/E at current price, would be 2.9. Could see the stock double. ($77) by Q2 and easily triple ($115) by end of Q4. Gonna be an exciting Q1 conference call...